Nominated as OAPS (Outstanding Academic Papers by Students) paper by Department in 2006-07.

Abstract:

It is a trend for people to travel on their own without joining the travel agents in
recent years. Travelers would take a map and search for sites to visit. However,
reading a paper map is inconvenient and difficult sometimes. With the technology
of GIS and GPS, there have already been maps on the Internet. To meet the
requirement of mobility of travel guides, maps have to be implemented on
handheld devices.
There have been some applications with GIS on PDA or pocket PCs. They
mainly provide location based or map based query, however, there is a lack of
location detection or tracking functionality. Even though some applications can
support GPS and provide routing function, they are useful for drivers only. They
are not suitable for ordinary visitors to travel in highly dense areas like Hong
Kong.
This project aims to implement informative maps on PDA-phones such that it can
provide users’ positioning. SIM tracking mechanism provided by SUNDAY LBS is
chosen to be used. The auto-detection of current location together with a
destination input by the users, an optimal path could be calculated and displayed
on a map to teach the users to go to the place. Moreover, audio and photo
display functions would also be provided. The deliverable will be of web-based
such that dynamic update of data can be available and no software deployment
is required for clients.
Throughout the project, technologies in location tracking will be examined. Also,
technical problems on path finding, route instruction generation and web UI of
PDA-phones will be justified and overcome. The project would be useful for the
development of located based applications on handheld devices and could be
acted as an extension to provide map information.